When I got my Samsung smart phone, I didn’t really intend on using any sort of tracking or fitness apps. However, my best friend is a fitness enthusiast who began tracking her steps two years ago, first with her phone and now with the a Fitbit. The joy she showed from reaching her steps goal seemed really nice and is what initially got me interested in tracking my own steps. I decided that I would start off small and get a free app instead of buying a Fitbit or other device. This was when I found the Samsung S Health fitness tracker on my phone. Quick, easy, simply and always running. It was perfect for my lazy-self. I knew at that time that it was mere curiosity and a desire to get the same joy from seeing my step count that my friend seemed to get.
Setting up the app was easy, especially for someone who did not intend to use it to its fullest worth. I put in my height, weight, gender, and age, and it calculated how many steps I should be walking. That number changes with how active I am on any given day, and I’m pretty sure that it’s expectation for me has decreased after recording how many steps I actually take during the day. Sometimes, I’ll have really good days where I’ll hit way over the recommended number of steps and almost twice as much as the recommend amount of time of continuous activity. These days are normally when I go to a fair or convention, or get dragged to the gym by my friend. The app will reward these random bursts of activity by giving me a badge for “Most Active Day” or “Longest Time Spent Active.” These badges are cute to see and do make me feel a little bit proud of all the walking I did.
The app is a lot more in-depth then what I’m using it for. My particular Samsung phone has a heart rate monitor on it, which links to the app, giving me another thing that I can track, all of which can be posted to social media. The app also has options for me to track my weight, hiking, stress, cycling, sports, food, water, caffeine, sleep, and blood glucose. Beyond those, that I just found while writing this post, the app has training programs and regimes you can use if you wanted to work towards a 5k or 10k. Finally, the app lets you set goals for yourself, such as “Feel More Rested” and “Eat Healthier.” I think that this app is a really great aid for people that are very health conscious and enjoy having those numbers recorded for reference.
After looking through the app a bit more thoroughly, I must say that I am curious to see what it would say about my health habits. I’m not soo much interested in seeing for my own judgement, but really to see how the app would judge me. I can’t explain this morbid curiosity in a possibly disheartening judgement from a piece of software, but I think it has to do with what the app is able to know that I’m not. Yes, I can feel comfortable and happy about my own lifestyle, but what am I unaware of? What do others know about themselves that I don’t know about my own body? What does the app know about my own body?
Previous Post
Next Post
I think you pose some really cogent points and questions, particularly in your conclusion. It’s one thing to be self-aware and in-the-know as far as what’s going on with yourself, but it’s another to think about where a third party fits into that situation. It’s almost mind boggling to think that someone else—or something else—could know something that you don’t based off of your own data, but I think that might be a direction we’re headed to a certain extent.
You brought up some great questions at the end there. It is crazy to think that even after inputting vast amounts of information, there is still more to be learned from self-tracking apps, especially things we didn’t even know could come out of one app. This sounds like a good app. Do you know if they have it for iPhones too?
This brings up a lot of good “future” questions. Where will our phones be able to test our blood glucose itself? I’m not sure if you recall in class when someone brought up the fitbit tipping someone off that they were pregnant (based on heart rate), so our devices are already beginning to give us information that we can use and interpret ourselves. Perhaps fitbit will eventually put in a feature that might use gender and resting heart rate to alert women to take a pregnancy test. How far will things go? I’m interested in hearing further elaboration on what you mean by “judging” you. Are you concerned that they will judge your health and eating habits and whatnot?